Obituary: Professor Jerry Morris

Morris did for exercise what Richard Doll did for smoking

Professor Jerry Morris, who has died at the age of 99, was the first to discover the clear link between lack of physical activity and heart disease.

In the late 1940s, Morris began a study comparing rates of heart attack among people of different occupations, as heart attack rates were increasing rapidly after the War. He made some striking discoveries – in particular, the statistics for heart attack among the men running London’s buses. Although from similar backgrounds, the drivers of the buses were twice as likely as the conductors to have heart attacks, age for age. The obvious difference between the two groups was simply that the drivers’ occupation was largely sedentary, while the conductors spent much of the day climbing the stairs of the double-decker buses – between 500 and 750 steps a day. Even where the drivers were no fatter than the conductors (and Morris analysed the waistband sizes of the uniforms issued to the men), exercise seemed to be protecting against heart attack.

The results were published in The Lancet in 1953 – initially to some scepticism, although since then, of course, exercise has been linked to many other health benefits. Like Richard Doll, who gave up smoking on the day he saw the results of his study that linked smoking with lung cancer, Morris practised what he preached. He claimed to have been the first person to go jogging on Hampstead Heath in the 1960s, carried on swimming into his 90s (apparently giving up primarily because people kept trying to rescue him), and he championed efforts to get people moving. He also sat on the Black Committee in the 1970s that investigated the impact of social inequalities on health – but was often frustrated by lack of progress.  He carried on working until he died – apparently with several projects still on the go.

Christine Hancock, C3’s director, summed up the feelings of many who knew and worked with him: ‘Jerry was an inspiration to so many of us – for the quality of his research, but most of all for his energy and enthusiasm. He was a wonderful example of someone who lived a long and healthy life.’

Sources: Financial Times interview, 12 September 2009; Financial Times obituary, 3 November 2009.

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